This Weight Upon My Shoulders
by rememberyourcosmicroots
Summary: Kasey and Bucky have spent the last year on the run. From Hydra, from the Avengers, from the world. And it had been working, up until Bucky's face is plastered on every TV and newspaper for a bombing he didn't commit and the Avengers start breathing down their necks. And Kasey finds herself in the middle, trying to figure out her future while also reliving her past. CA:CW rewritten
1. Chapter 1

_May 6th, 2016_

_Bucharest, Romania_

Kasey's first thought as she watches the news is, _I can't believe this is happening._

The second, almost bulldozing over the first one is, _I should have expected this. _

And of course she should have. She should've expected this. She should've expected that one day Hydra would get tired of chasing them and would do something drastic.

She didn't expect it to be this big, but, well. Hydra's not exactly known to be subtle.

And blowing up a UN conference? That's about as big as it gets.

"This is crazy," Elizabeth mutters from beside her, and Kasey finds herself nodding, even as one of her fingers punctures a hole in the dishrag she clutches in an ironclad grip. They flash a picture of the supposed UN bomber, and a strange buzzing fills her ears.

She should've expected this. She feels helpless, as if there's some way she could prevent it. The reporter explains that they're looking for James Buchanan Barnes, the infamous Hydra assassin, now responsible for the death of eleven high-ranking officials.

Because _of course_ they're looking for Bucky, regardless of the fact that he wasn't even in the damn country when it happened.

The two of them have been on the run for over a year. That's far too long in Hydra's book.

_It's kind of the perfect thing to frame him for, _Kasey's brain supplies. _This can't be ignored. _

A tingling races over her skin as if she's been set on fire; she practically shakes in anticipation, and she knows her own body's signals well enough to that it's preparing her for something that she can't possibly predict. From her other side, another waiter they call Walton places a hand on Kasey's shoulder. "You alright, Angelica? You've gone a bit pale. Do you want to sit down?"

Elizabeth turns, concern lacing her tone as she says, "Do you have family in Vienna, Angie? I'm sure they're alright. Take a seat. I'll get you some water."

Walton's grip on her shoulder tightens in a way Kasey knows is meant to be comforting, but warning bells go off in her head. _Don't let him touch you. Don't let him touch you._ She shrugs from his grip and turns until she faces him.

Another one of her fingers punctures the dishrag, a soft _thip _that only she seems to hear. Kasey knows, distantly, like someone shouting from a rooftop, that she's going into full-on panic mode.

_I should've expected this. _

_Why didn't I expect this?_

"Move," Kasey says to Walton, who now stands between her and the door, and Kasey feels as if he's doing it on purpose, as if he's trapping her here. He doesn't hear her, and she can't look him directly in the eyes, but instead stares intently at his chin. "Move," she says again, her voice shaky, like her how your legs wobble when you stand on an uneven bridge. She pictures herself as a caged animal, pacing back and forth.

_Move, Kasey, move!_

Walton frowns at the TV screen, a little crease appearing between his brows. Elizabeth disappears into the back to get her some water, but Kasey suspects that's not the case at all. Bucky's been to the diner before. What if they recognized him from the picture on screen, and devised this plan over her head while she wasn't looking? Elizabeth's probably in the back right now, calling the number they'd seen on screen.

Kasey can almost hear her. "_Hi, yes, I'd like to report a sighting of the man on the TV? Yeah, uh, he's been into our diner a few times and is the roommate of one of the waitresses here. Yeah, she's still here. My friend is keeping her occupied. Oh, she's extremely lethal and dangerous and we should call the police immediately? I'm on it, sir._"

Kasey needs to leave. _Now_. She needs to leave the diner, leave town, leave the whole damn country too. Hydra will flock here in seconds if they catch a whiff of either of them being in town. Much less the two of them _together_. It'll be like shooting fish in a barrel.

"Move," Kasey manages, too soft to be heard. Jittering panic sparks her limbs to life, itching to fight her way out of this situation. "Please, Walton."

_Because_, she wants to add, _in a few seconds, I'm not going to be able to control what I do. So please, Walton, move out of the way before you get hurt_.

Walton's eyes have drifted back to the screen, where the news report on screen is still playing, reciting the same information over and over.

" — _a bomb hidden in a news van rips through the UN building in Vienna. More than seventy people have been injured, at least twelve are dead, including Wakanda's King T'Chaka. Officials have released a video of a suspect identified as the James Buchanan Barnes, the Winter Soldier, the infamous Hydra agent linked to numerous acts of terrorism and political assassinations. Anyone with information regarding the whereabouts of the man identified in the picture on screen, please call — "_

The words slam through her repeatedly, humming loudly in her ears.

_Twelve dead. _

_Twelve dead._

_Twelve dead._

"I know this probably won't help," Walton begins, and Kasey can look at him fully in the face while his gaze is trained elsewhere, "but look at the guy they're looking for. Look at him, Angelica. Do you know who that looks like?"

_Don't say it, don't say it, don't say it . . . _

"It kinda looks like your roommate. The one with the hair and the scruff." He laughs, and Kasey's hands curl into fists. Thank God he still isn't looking her way and can't see her face morph into deadly calm. Her spine tightens, and she all her muscles tense. If she was a cat, all her hair would be raised. _Don't say it, Walton, please_. "Duh. You only have the one roommate. What's his name, again? Isn't it — "

Kasey's fist clocks him right under the jaw. Walton goes stumbling back from the force, hands flying up in front of him protectively. The punch is hard enough to break the skin of her knuckles, and she blinks in surprise, shocked she didn't knock Walton out cold. Maybe she's rusty.

Someone shrieks from behind her, a woman's shriek, and the sound of glass smashing against linoleum.

_I warned you. _

She's caught. If they didn't know, they certainly know now.

Kasey stalks forward, eyes trained on the door, her breathing coming in and out through her nose, nice and even. Controlled.

_I am in control. I am in control. I am in —_

"What the hell, Angelica?" Walton demands from the floor, sounding as if he's talking with a mouth full of cotton. Kasey grabs her jacket from the coat rack and discards her apron on the floor in one fluid movement. "Holy — holy shit. That's him, isn't it? Elizabeth! Elizabeth, that's actually — "

The door to the diner shuts with finality, cutting Walton off for the second time in the same matter of minutes. Outside in the fresh air, away from the chaos of the diner, Kasey sucks in a deep breath before marching off determinedly down the sidewalk.

Only once she's two blocks closer to her apartment building does Kasey allow herself to stop. She presses a shaky hand to her face, giving herself a few seconds to properly panic. She knows what a huge deal bombing the UN is. She knows what kind of people it's going to put on their trail. Everyone in the world is going to be looking for Bucky — and soon enough, especially after the stunt she just pulled, they're going to be looking for her, too.

Okay. _Okay_. She can only focus on one thing at a time. First, find Bucky. Second, get her stuff from the apartment. Third, flee the country. They've gotta stick to non-English speaking countries, but it'd also be nice to get off the continent, maybe head somewhere that's less likely to turn heads. Maybe somewhere warm with lots of beaches, but that's just personal preference.

_Though_, Kasey thinks, _a certain metal arm will stand out just as much as wearing jackets in one hundred degree weather, so maybe a place with actual changing seasons would be nice._

What about China? Or one of the many Asian countries where a blonde teenage girl and a middle-aged man with a metal prosthetic will stick out like sore thumbs?

_God_. Kasey can feel a headache coming on.

Well, one step at a time. She needs to find Bucky.

She doesn't know where he'd be at this time of day when she's usually working, but she hopes he'll be back at the apartment, not out spending her hard-earned money on something stupid, like . . . like . . .

_Plums_.

On that thought, Kasey pivots on her heel and crosses the street immediately, causing several cars to blare their horns and swerve to avoid hitting her. Kasey waves them off with a hand. She has no time for politeness.

Kasey passes by Bucky's favorite fruit stand briskly but catches no sight of him. Which is fine, truly, because she's at least put herself on the path he would've taken if he'd come this way. It's slightly out of the way of the route she takes to get home, but now she's more likely to come across him.

And she does.

She spots him almost immediately from where he stands on the corner of an intersection, one hand clutching a plastic bag filled with plums. Kasey had bought some _once_ while they were in Maine and Bucky hadn't gotten enough since. But even as plum-crazy as he is, the sight of Bucky in one piece and not tearing his roots out at the new development in the crazy story of their lives is enough to make Kasey relax.

_He probably doesn't even know yet, _Kasey realizes.

She approaches him quickly, trying not to make a scene, cutting through the throngs of people like a motorboat heading against the current.

An ambulance passes by, sirens wailing, and Kasey tracks it with her eyes until it passes.

_What if it's going to the diner to care for Walton? What if you broke his jaw, Kasey? Gave him face paralysis? What if he's going to be disfigured forever just because you can't stay in control?_

_I _was _in control. _

She ignores her brain and continues towards Bucky, still a hundred feet away. He has a baseball cap pulled low over his eyes, and wears a pair of gloves even though the weather outside is, at a stretch, chilly. He stares at the man behind the newspaper stand across the street so intently he hasn't even noticed the crosswalk is completely clear. Specifically, he stares at the man behind the counter, who looks back with vague interest. Then the man's eyes widen and he bolts, shoving through the crowds of market people. She watches Bucky track the man with his eyes as he flees like he's being chased by a bear.

_Not good_, Kasey's brain interjects.

_Shut up_, she hisses back.

She cuts across the street again as Bucky beelines to the newspaper stand, one gloved hand reaching out to pick up the latest issue. There are more displayed on a rack next to him and Kasey catches a glimpse of the headline.

Her heart sinks.

They've already printed newspapers covering the bombing. The picture taken from a security camera catches Bucky's face fully on the grainy screen, and the headline declares the Winter Soldier responsible. None of the 'suspect' wording that the news reporter had granted him. Bucky is guilty, without a shadow of a doubt.

Kasey stops just over his shoulder, waiting until Bucky notices her before speaking. She racks her brain for something to say, but can't come up with anything that would help. What do you say in a situation like this?

"I'm thinking Istanbul," says Kasey, and Bucky's gaze flickers over to her as he throws the newspaper down in disgust. "You know. Next. I've heard they've got beautiful . . . uh — you know, beautiful . . ." She searches for anything in her brain she knows about Istanbul.

"Is that what we're looking for now, huh? Beauty?" he asks. His jaw clenches, and a small crease appears between his eyebrows. His tone alone is enough to make Kasey's skin itch. But they've dealt with this a hundred times before, and they can do it again now.

_We can. I know we can._

Kasey shrugs. "Might as well go somewhere with perks, right?"

Bucky shakes his head, looking like he's trying not to smile, and jerks his head in the very general direction of their apartment building. "Come on."

Kasey follows, walking alongside him until their footsteps synchronize. They exit the market in silence.

But over and over in her head, like a video stuck on a loop, is Walton's head jerking back from the impact of her fist. Slowly, like a bubble growing in her chest, Kasey begins to feel as if she's keeping a secret from Bucky by not telling him.

She blurts, "Some guy at the diner put the pieces together. I'm sorry, Sarge."

"Doesn't matter — I mean, it's fine," says Bucky, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye. "The guy at the newspaper stand definitely made me. They're trying to get the whole world on our asses."

Kasey bites the inside of her cheek. "How did this happen?" she asks, even though they both have a good idea on the _what, where, why, _and _who_.

"You know it wasn't me in Vienna," Bucky replies, his head looking kinda like an owl's as he constantly scans the people around them. Kasey fidgets, feeling as anxious as he looks. Knowing that Hydra is closing in on them makes the whole world seem so . . . _small_. "Hydra's gone public after D.C.," he continues. "Everything they have is out there for anyone to see. Maybe they think the only way to get to us is to call the whole world to attention, too."

"Why just you? On the news, I mean?"

Bucky glances towards her, trying to smile. "No offense to you, Kase, but I'm pretty infamous. And New York thinks you're dead."

"Hydra doesn't care."

"They'd have a harder time convincing the world some random teenager from the '90's has come back to life rather than pinning this all on me."

She presses her lips together. "Fair enough."

Kasey racks her head once more for a plan of attack — or, more accurately, one of retreat — but all she can think about is how much she really doesn't want to leave. They've been in Bucharest the longest of any of their other spots — Ukraine, Slovakia, Hungary — basically any European country where the two of them can easily blend in. Kasey isn't sure if continuing with that pattern would be a mistake. But going anywhere warm would make it impossible for Bucky to do anything. They needed to go somewhere perpetually cold, and that meant —

The two seem to reach the same conclusion at the same time, and Kasey looks over at him to see that he's already watching her with his eyebrows furrowed.

"So Russia, then?"

"Yeah. Sorry, kid."

Even as Kasey's throat closes up, she manages, "Don't be. As long as it's not _there_, you know?"

Up ahead, their apartment building looms into view. It looms over every other building in its immediate vicinity, the closest being a parking garage nearby. Their apartment sits on the top level. She'd thought it was a smart move at the time, since the rent was cheaper because literally _no one _wanted a place up that high — and how bad could all those stairs be on super-powered knees? — but now it looks so . . . isolated. One way up, one way down. Like Rapunzel's castle.

Her feet stop moving without Kasey asking them to.

"Do we really need to go back?" she asks before she can clamp down on the words. She doesn't like the way her voice edges on pleading, making her sound pubescent, but going back to the apartment seems too risky. Already, her stomach sinks in a way that tells her to get on the next bus and never look back.

Bucky glances at her out of the corner of his eye. "You don't have to," he says. "I just need my bag."

"Maybe we don't have to go at all," she replies. "What's in that bag? Money and a change of clothes? We can make do." When Bucky doesn't reply, she insists, "We can."

"How about you meet me at the bus station? The one on fifth?"

Kasey catches on to what he doesn't say, something she can only do with him. When it comes to anybody else, she has the brain of a two-year-old when it comes to reading between the lines.

"We're not splitting up," she insists.

"Look," Bucky says with a sigh, sticking an arm out and forcing her to turn and look at him. A little worry line appears between his brows, and it makes Kasey think that sometimes he really does look a hundred years old. "It's just . . . there's a difference between having the whole world on your ass instead of just Hydra. And you're still injured, kid."

"Barely," says Kasey, jutting out her chin. "And you know I hate it when you — "

Bucky waves her off. "Sorry. Habit. But please, Kasey, just . . . just meet me at the bus stop?"

It takes Kasey a second to place the emotion on Bucky's face — his pinched eyebrows, clenched jaw, fidgeting hands. _Fear_. She can see it in the way his back is tense, his eyes are narrowed, and his breath seems to catch in his chest with every inhale.

This whole situation certainly doesn't feel that much different from Hydra, not with the way that Hydra just seems to be _everywhere_. She knows dozens of former agents would love to put bullets in their brains or strap them to lab tables or submit them to their programming, and that they could run into any number of them at any point. Especially Kasey, who carries her whole 'unfinished experiment' label around with her like extra luggage. They must know her and Bucky are still together — otherwise, she'd be on the news too, framed for her own set of dastardly crimes.

And if whoever has the Red Book gets the urge to come after them, or already _is_ coming after them, well . . . they'll both be screwed. And Kasey would like to be around Bucky when that happens.

"And after everything with Calloway — "

Kasey puts a hand up to stop him. The last thing she wants to think about is Calloway right now. "We're not splitting up. We're in this together, Sarge."

Bucky nods stiffly, as if his neck is made of wood, looking both relieved and not pleased with her answer. They continue walking.

Once they reach the apartment, Bucky leads them around back to the door with the flimsy lock that jimmies open easily and leads directly into the stairwell.

Kasey stares up at the winding stairs before following behind Bucky. It's a good they have super serum in their veins, or the trek would kill her knees.

_It already kinda does_, she thinks as she heaves herself up step by step, adrenaline flooding her veins and making the strain easier to bear.

They reach the top and Bucky opens the door to their apartment silently. He twists the doorknob with ease, and they make eye contact.

It's unlocked.

* * *

Author's Notes!

I've been working on this thing on and off for about a year, so it seems fitting I'd post the first chapter before I go see Endgame. (It'll be up on AO3 in a couple days too.)

Leave a review if you enjoyed!


	2. Chapter 2

_April 20th, 2016_

_Bucharest, Romania_

"Come on, kid, we're so close. We're so close. Just a little bit more."

Kasey sucks in a deep, wavering breath, holding it in her lungs for a second. The gaping hole in her torso hurts less when she doesn't breathe. So would lying down, or sleeping, or any one of the number of things that is the exact opposite of trekking miles back to the apartment on foot in the dead of night.

But none of that really looks like an option at the moment.

She doesn't remember much of what happened. She remembers flashes, and what happened well before, but during the actual fight and the consequential act of Calloway shooting her in the stomach with the same gun that killed —

She lets the breath slowly, through her nose, an inch at a time.

They'd been hunting him for the past two months, ever since Kasey realized that Bucky didn't really plan on letting her out of his sight. It was going to be their last mission, one built completely on choice. They chose to do this — no one else made them. _Freedom_. Isn't that what they deserve?

Or maybe it's just due diligence.

Calloway had disappeared underground ever since Kasey's grand escape, but the two of them are trained hunters. It took over a month to find him. It took less than a week to head to Romania and stake him out.

They took up shop in Bucharest, because they needed a safe place to retreat to once they got him. She kinda regrets picking a place so far away now.

Kasey remembers pulling up to the crappy motel he had been living out of.

At the time, Kasey hadn't really thought past finding him, but now that she had, sitting in their stolen car with a fidgety and nervous Bucky sitting beside her, she knew what she wanted to do.

She was going to kill Dr. Calloway.

Kasey holds her next breath a little too long, and it comes out in a cough that leaves blood dripping down the corner of her mouth.

But it hadn't happened like that, had it?

After that, she doesn't remember much — she remembers there being more men than they expected, and they overwhelmed Kasey and Bucky. She remembers flying at Calloway with everything she had, but she remembers other people kept getting in the way, holding her back.

She remembers the gun in her waistband ending up in Calloway's hand. She remembers him grinning, giving another one of his fucking speeches, and shooting her in the stomach.

She remembers Bucky screaming her name as fifteen ex-Hydra agents held him back.

"I don't want you to go to waste," Calloway had said, giving her a soft look that made Kasey's stomach turn.

After that, nothing. She wakes up surrounded by trees with a worried Bucky standing over her. She doesn't even feel anything until she pressed a hand to her torso, wondering why it feels so warm — and it comes away covered in blood. Pain courses through her body and hasn't stopped, not even for a second, since.

Bucky meets her gaze. She remembers how much his gaze scared her when they first met. It was just so . . . _stern_. Angry. Terrifying. But now she can actually reach underneath it, and see the concern for her wellbeing lying underneath.

"We have to move soon," he'd said. "Calloway called for reinforcements before I — I offed him. The sun's going to set soon, and getting hunted in the dark is no joyride."

_Alright_. Kasey nods, and begins the slow process of getting to her feet. It's pure torture just to lift her head off of Bucky's jacket, and she only manages to get up on one elbow and bending one knee beneath her before Bucky's presses both hands into her shoulders. "Wait, wait, wait. What the hell, kid?"

She blinks. "Uh. Getting up?"

"Just — just stay there."

"Uh, no thanks," says Kasey. "What are you going to do, carry me?"

Bucky kneels down. "Kid, you can't walk."

Kasey narrow her eyes, even though it makes her head spin. "I can walk."

"Fine._ I_ don't want you walking. You're bleeding out from both sides, Kase."

"Am I going to die?"

Bucky glances at her sharply. "Not if I can help it."

"Okay, then."

Kasey feels determination boil over like a pot that spent too long on the stove. She doesn't know where this irrational anger comes from, but it explodes out of her, and she forces herself to her feet. It takes far longer than she would've liked, and though it feels like she's climbing Mount Everest, she must actually look like she's a turtle trying to flip over from its back and by the time she's vertical, she has to grasp Bucky's arm for support. He watches her, face split down the middle between fury and amusement.

It takes a moment for her head to stop spinning. "Come on, stud," she says, patting Bucky's arm. Her other hand keeps the shirt in place, and she spares it a glance only after she's sure she can stomach it. "Oh. That's gnarly."

Bucky fetches his jacket from the ground, and loops Kasey's arm over his broad shoulders. "Gnarly?"

She tries to smile, but it comes off sloppy, barely pulling at one corner of her mouth.

He sighs. "I need a cigarette."

She coughs, and feels the acidic taste of blood hit her tongue. "Smoking causes cancer, Sarge."

"I'm a superhuman."

"That's fair."

For just a moment, seconds before they start walking, Kasey absolutely regrets saying she can walk. She sees the journey ahead in flashes, of them walking until they find a road, and then continuing on that road until they get back to Bucharest. It'll take several hours to walk the whole way. They don't have a car, and even if they did, Bucky hates driving, but there's no way he'll allow her behind the wheel now.

And it . . . it's the last thing she wants to do.

She wants to lie back down and suffer quietly.

Above all, she wants the pain to stop, because this isn't sore muscles or tiny cuts or bruises. That kind of pain is almost a distraction because it feels almost inversely _good_ in some ways. But not this. Not . . . this. This is all-consuming.

But wanting the pain to stop is a stupid feeling, because it's not possible, and won't be for a long time. She needs to focus on practical things right now, like getting somewhere she can get stitched up.

_I am in control. I am in control_.

She sucks in a long, deep breath, and meets Bucky's eyes. She nods, and Bucky frowns. But then he pulls them forwards, starting through the patch of dirt they're on and into the much thicker forest.

Kasey doesn't ask where they're going. She tells herself it's because she doesn't have the energy to ask, but she knows the real reason. She trusts Bucky.

After that, it had been some of the hardest hours of Kasey's life. As soon as they get out of the woods, they tried to stay away from people, and instead stuck to deserted neighborhoods and side streets until they made it all the way back to Bucharest. Kasey had walked on her own, clutching one of Bucky's shirts to the bloody mess near her stomach, until she went down hard on her knees and hadn't been able to stand without her arm over Bucky's shoulders.

"Look, kid," says Bucky.

Kasey lifts her head up, ignoring the excruciating wave of pain that courses through her body at even the smallest of movements. The night is pitch-black, no stars, no moon, and only street lights every one hundred feet to light their way.

But up ahead, even through the darkness, Kasey can make out the shape of their apartment building.

She lets out a sigh, but she really can't bring herself to speak. Her head flops back onto Bucky's shoulder.

Bucky's arm tightens around her waist. She knows he's worried, but she can't bring herself to comfort him. "Kid?"

"Let's . . . go," she manages. Walking even another step feels like total hell, but they don't have many other options. Kasey would like to die in the place she's called home for the past few weeks, not on some street corner.

They stumble forwards again, and Kasey sucks in a deep breath — Bucky goes as slow as he can, but everything hurts. He can't do anything to prevent it.

Her feet move under her automatically, and Bucky moves as smoothly as he can, trying his best not to jostle her. He slung her arm around her his shoulders hours ago, back when Kasey could still walk on her own, but by that time she felt so tired she didn't even protest. Ever since then, they've moved together as one, until Kasey grows weak enough to the point that Bucky has to practically carry her.

It feels like hours pass, but soon enough, they're stumbling through the lobby. Kasey's whole body sags in relief, because they're _so close_, and she'll get to rest and sleep and lie somewhere safe and —

And all that relief drains out of her faster than came.

Bucky pulls her towards the staircase.

They reach the bottom, and Kasey can just picture the dozens of flights after, walking until she can't feel her feet anymore.

She won't make it up.

"I can't," she whispers, nearly pulling away from Bucky. "I can't, Sarge, I can't."

"Kasey — "

Her hand slips from his grip, and she stumbles away, her knees giving out from under her and she sinks to the floor. Her stomach spasms in pain, and she groans, feeling more bile crawl up her throat. She retches at the base of the stairs, muscles tensing and throbbing and screaming out in pain.

It's not bile. It's blood.

"Oh, God," she says.

Bucky lifts her off his feet and into his arms in one smooth motion, his arm hooked beneath her knees and the other cradling her back.

She buries her head into his chest.

"I got you," he says. "I got you."

She lets out a sob. She doesn't want to die. Not like this. Not over some petty fight that she got herself into. Not by the man that stole her life from her once already.

Her fist tightens into Bucky's shirt. "He's dead, right?" she croaks, glancing up to look at him. His face strains as he works his way up the stairs, and she reminds herself that her foolish plan got him injured, too. She gets hit with an overwhelming feeling that she can't place — it swells in her chest and makes her want to close her eyes and let Bucky deal with this.

It's _trust_.

She trusts him.

That was not part of the plan.

Bucky glances down at her, his expression soft. "Y-Yeah, kid, he's dead."

Calloway might be dead, but he'd gotten the last laugh — there seems to be a pretty good chance Kasey's going to follow him to the grave.

A lifetime later, Bucky sets her down on the couch of their apartment — which is so small her knees bend over the armrests — and the room tilts and sways like the world's worst roller coaster. Eventually, the dirty ceiling comes into focus, pain making the edges of her vision blurry and hard to focus on. She can only stare at the ceiling, feeling blood leak out of her as her stupid heart continues to beat.

_You're dying_.

Bucky disappears, and then comes back a moment later with blankets and their miserable first-aid kit.

"K — can you tell me your name?"

She swallows, and her throat feels like sandpaper. "Kasey." She almost says _Eve_, just out of habit, and it makes her dry throat feel exponentially worse.

"_Full_ name."

"Kasey A-Angelica Barnes." She shifts, trying to get a good look at "Did — Did you . . . Is he dead?" she asks. Her vision begins to blur, and Bucky becomes two, then three, then four. She blinks, and all the Buckys snap back into one. The pain in her stomach continues to throb uncontrollably. She refuses to look down at the damage. She needs to stay conscious, and looking down at the blood seeping out of her body is probably the worst thing she could do.

Bucky glances up at her, brows furrowed, an emotions she doesn't have the brain power to decipher swell behind his eyes. "Yes."

Kasey feels her head relax against something soft, but it's not a pillow, nor the hard ground. She can't even begin to process — Calloway is _dead_. And she hadn't been the one to do it, but . . . he's _dead_.

He can't hurt anybody else.

He can't hurt _her_.

It doesn't feel satisfying, like something has finally shifted inside her. She doesn't feel proud, or relieved, or happy.

She feels the purpose she's clutched onto for the past year drain out through her ears and dribble onto the ground.

It leaves her feeling empty.

She looks back to Sarge, who is busying himself with a roll of gauze, but his hands seem to be shaking.

Kasey reaches out and grabs his hand. "I'm really tired," she says. She doesn't know if she means right now, or just with life in general. Probably both.

"Kid. No dying. Okay? No dying," says Bucky, and she finally recognizes that he sounds frustrated. "Here." The hand holding hers presses it into her stomach, and Kasey finds a wad of fabric. She realizes that Bucky is without his jacket and his outermost shirt. "Can you keep pressure on that?"

She nods, and complies, pressing lightly on the fabric. It sends all sorts of new pain through her system, and she feels her body buck slightly, trying to get away from her own hand, and her eyes squeeze shut.

"Whoa, whoa. Kasey. Kasey. Look at me."

Her hand doesn't let up, and after a minute of her body getting used to it and Bucky's gentle coaxing, she peels her eyes open again.

"Alright," says Bucky. "Can you feel everything?"

Kasey humors him, and wiggles all her fingers and toes one by one. "Uh-huh."

"Did you feel that?"

Just for a second, she panics. "N-No."

He nods. "Good."

"That's _good_?"

"Well, yeah, I didn't actually do anything, so."

She smirks, a small smile pulling at her lips, but she knows better than to laugh.

"You're a jerk."

"And you're a punk."

She can't leave Bucky alone. She can't. She doesn't know what he'll do.

So she has to live. For Bucky, if nothing else.

"Sarge," she says. "Is he dead?"

_Bucharest, Romania_

_May 6th, 2016_

Kasey steps into the apartment, feeling hyper aware of everything around her.

Her apartment never used to feel this way; in fact, after she boarded up all the windows with newspapers, it always felt like a little cave she could retreat to. But now, knowing that this will probably be the last time she ever sees it, she takes it in with fresh eyes.

The drywall has long, spider web-like cracks, the ceiling is yellow from years of chain smoking — not by them — and mystery stains paint the walls, floor, and ceiling, everywhere that probably predate Kasey's birth and will probably outlast her too. Their ratty couch they found on a curb sits in the center of the room beside a small lamp, and wood crates and cinder blocks stack high against the wall for storage. Her bedroom stands off to the right, door closed, pressed against the wall as if it could melt right into the wallpaper. The door has a dent around the handle where Kasey nearly ripped the knob off in a fit of anger.

Her and Sarge tried to make it feel homey. Neither of them have a home, and Kasey remembers the odd look in Bucky's eye when she begged for his help to bring up the ratty old couch she'd spotted on a curb. She did what she could, but she could only do so much with so little cash to spare. Only their kitchen is well-stocked with enough food for two super-serum pack rats who paper up their windows.

If this is a home, anybody would tell her it's been a miserable attempt.

Despite her reminiscing, Kasey notices one oddity in the room immediately: Captain freaking America stands in the center of their kitchen, one of Sarge's notebooks clutched in hand, full Avengers suit on, including his infamous shield strapped to his back. He faces away from Kasey with his head bent as he reads over the pages.

Bucky approaches from behind Kasey. He steps to her left, filling the space, silent as a ghost. She glances towards him, wondering if he feels the same way she does. Captain America being here feels . . . wrong. He doesn't belong here, surrounded by their stuff. As if he's reserved only for the TV and pictures in museums.

Kasey idly wonders if she should warn him about the exposed nail two inches away from his left foot.

Sarge doesn't seem too happy that Cap has his nose stuck in his journal. _She _doesn't have permission to read his journals, and she doesn't suspect Captain America gets a free pass either. The journal is for memory recollection, things that he remembers about himself so he can look back on it. Memories come in dreams when you least expect them, and fade twice as fast. Kasey has a similar one stuck into a slit in her mattress, and more stuffed into her backpack. Bucky hasn't read hers, either. They're personal, and they talk enough. Reading each other's journals would just be invasive.

_So first he breaks into their apartment, then goes through their stuff?_

Kasey already doesn't like this guy.

Sarge gestures with his hand, a quick wave that means _stop, freeze, go still_ — he catches Kasey's eye and she pauses, holding her breath, waiting for the invader to notice them.

_Oh, hi! Didn't see you there. Sorry, just interrupting you as you break into our apartment. Want a tour of the bathroom, while you're at it? Or did you already snoop through our toiletries?_

"Understood," Captain America says. She jumps — she'd been focusing so hard on the silence in the room that the words practically smack her in the face. Kasey guesses that he's got backup. What she doesn't understand is where that backup is now. Why aren't they here? Did they send Cap in to . . . what? Observe them? Talk to them? Empathize with them on superhuman level?

She glances at Bucky once more.

_We're hard to empathize with._

Kasey can feel her heartbeat pick up tempo, and her hands close into fists. Her Hydra-given instincts flood in like a tidal wave, overwhelming all her other senses and demanding she does what Eve thinks is best.

But Eve always tell her to cut Bucky and run. And Kasey can't do that.

Captain America shifts, his head turning sharply over his shoulder to glance at Kasey as if suddenly sensing another presence in the room. His eyes widen slightly, eyebrows twitching, but that's all Kasey manages to grasp before she focuses intently on the breastplate of his uniform. She senses Captain America's gaze shift over to Bucky a moment later.

"Do you know me?" he asks, turning fully, and it makes Kasey instinctively takes half a step back.

Bucky's face is unreadable. "You're Steve," he says. Then, like an explanation, "I read about you in a museum."

"I know you're nervous," Captain America replies, closing the notebook and placing it down on the counter slowly, as if it's a bomb. As if _they_ are. "And you have plenty of reason to be. But you're lying."

"I wasn't in Vienna," Sarge insists, and his eyes downcast. Kasey hates to see Bucky absolutely shaken to his core, but that's always how he gets when Steve Rogers is brought up. "I don't do that anymore."

Captain America glances over to Kasey, who once again finds the star on his breastplate very interesting. He seems to questioning her presence, and she wonders what he thinks about her. His gaze draws back to Bucky. "Well, the people who think you did are coming here now. And they're not planning on taking you alive. _Either_ of you."

"That's smart," says Bucky, glancing at Kasey pointedly. She feels her spine tighten and her posture straighten. She's ready. "Good strategy."

Loud thumps echo above their heads, slamming harshly against the concrete roof — footsteps. Bucky glances up at the ceiling. More footsteps echo out in the stairwell.

_Run_, her instincts whisper. _Run, run, run_.

Kasey reaches a hand into her hair, tugging on her roots, pleading the voice to go away, to leave just for a moment.

Bucky glances at her once more, a warning mixed with concern, and she nods. She can feel the crescendo coming. It's only a matter of seconds.

Steve glances between the two of them. "This doesn't have to end in a fight, Buck."

_Buck_. Kasey snorts.

Sarge's bag of plums thumps on the small table. "It always ends in a fight."

Kasey takes a deep breath, feeling both jittery and resigned at the same time. A wave of _oh, here we go again_, hits her straight in the gut. Bucky's right. No matter how hard they try, how deep they dig themselves, how well they hide, there always seems to be a fight waiting for them.

Her hand reaches out, fumbling along the drywall, feeling for the small incision she'd made to indicate where to put her hand. She finds it and rears back her fist, slamming into the wall. She doesn't miss Steve's look of surprise. Plaster crumples around her hand, and she pulls her backpack out from the rubble.

"You pulled me from the river," Captain America says, glancing urgently towards the windows. "Why?"

Bucky pulls off his gloves. "I don't know."

"Yes, you do," Steve insists, eyes searching Bucky's face for an answer.

Then everything goes to hell.

Kasey swears she hears a static voice yelling, "_Breach! Breach! Breach!_" seconds before a flash grenade breaks through the window closest to Cap. His instincts kick in automatically, swinging like he's swatting a fly, and his shield appears in his hand as if by magic. It explodes into the kitchen wall in a sharp burst of light. A second breaks through the window nearest to her and Sarge, and Bucky kicks it towards Captain America, who slams his shield down on top of it. Smoke and a sharp whine leak out from the sides.

Behind her, someone shouts orders in German. The feeble front door shakes as something slams into it.

_It's not even locked, idiots! _Kasey shouts in her brain. _You think we'd lock ourselves in here with an Avenger?_

Her brain yells back, _You're the idiot if you don't do something right NOW!_

Her vision sharpens and time seems to slow.

_Right. Time to fight_.

Kasey sees Bucky dive for his mattress, and kicks the end up for him just as another grenade flies through the window. She notices that they're only trying to disarm, not kill — nothing that could potentially injure the innocent people below them.

Seconds later, Bucky hefts their coffee table up and sends it flying down the hallway towards the front door, where it wedges between the wall and door frame, like a barricade. The door trembles again, but the table holds firm.

Kasey points her thumb towards the door. "Wasn't that our way out?"

"Don't sass me, kid."

"Just admit it — you're glad I came."

Bucky gives her a pointed glare.

Kasey notices movement out of the corner of her eye and turns just in time to intercept the armor-clad officer of the GSG 9. He swings through the window, shattering the rest of the glass — her and Bucky work as a team to rip the large gun from his hands and slam him into the far wall.

"They sent in the anti-terrorism guys. For _us_," she tells Bucky, who just kinda grunts in acknowledgement.

Captain America takes out the next officer that pops through the window with practiced ease.

_Captain America can never say no to a fight_, Kasey thinks. _He's even fighting his own guys._

_Unless . . . these aren't his guys?_

_But I thought _— _They're not _— _Is this Hydra?_

_Is Cap helping us here?_

Kasey dismisses the thought as soon as it comes to her. Hydra wouldn't use flash grenades.

Another armor-clad officer rushes in through the balcony door, and Bucky charges him in a flurry of anger and rage, knocking him back out to the balcony.

"Buck, stop!"

Captain America's hand lands on Bucky's shoulder, halting him from following the man out. Kasey takes a half-step forward before freezing.

Bucky ducks under Cap's grip, turning until they face each other.

"You're going to kill somebody," Cap says, his voice softer but still reprimanding. Kasey almost finds it condescending, and it makes her want to punch the living daylights out of him. He obviously still thinks of Bucky as a loose cannon.

Any thought of trusting Steve goes out the window.

Then Bucky flips Cap to the ground. He lands with such a solid thud that the walls rattle. Seconds later, Sarge plunges his fist into the hardwood next to Cap's head.

"I'm not going to kill anyone," says Sarge, his voice low.

He pulls his backpack out from the below the floorboards, and motions to Kasey. Immediately, she tosses her backpack to him, and he throws both bags out the balcony door. They disappear over the side, stolen by gravity, but Kasey knows they'll land on the parking garage below, just as planned.

Unfortunately for Captain America, they prepared this escape the day they moved in.

Another flash of black catches Kasey's eye, and she leaps on the next armored officer to appear. He fires off a few rounds in Bucky's direction. Cap leaps in the pathway, shield raised, and the bullets ping off the metal, letting off little sparks.

Kasey grabs the officer's gun and yanks it to the side, swinging her other fist to clock the side of his head. She twists the gun from his grip and brings it down on the side of his knee, hard enough that she hears a pop. A cinderblock brushes by her hand and she scoops it up, swinging and striking him across the chest.

The man gets pushed through the bathroom door and collapses in a heap.

Behind her, Bucky quite literally throws Cap towards the other window, where he hits another soldier as he's trying to come through.

"Come on," Bucky says, brushing by her, and she follows him down the hallway to their front door.

She smirks. "Another change of plans?"

"Change of plans _back _to the original plans," Bucky says, trying to give her a reassuring smile.

Kasey resists the urge to stick her tongue out at him.

Three sharp gunshots ring out from the opposite side of the door, and small holes appear where the hinges used to be. Bucky wrenches the table out from its spot, and it breaks into two pieces from the stress.

From the way the holes look, Kasey determines that the man must be standing slightly to their left, out of the way of any rebounding wood. She taps a place on the wall, and Bucky drives his fist through it, connecting with the man on the other side.

Kasey grins at her work, thinks, _You're an idiot_, and shoves her shoulder into the front door with enough force to send it flying backwards and into another armored soldier. He goes down in an unconscious heap.

Beyond their apartment, several more armored men take up the entire first landing. Kasey counts eleven in her first sweep, and more coming up the stairs, guns raised. She sighs, and raises her fists. She glances over at Bucky, whose expression matches her own.

Kasey's not quite sure who these men are, but she discovers pretty quickly that there's no way in hell these guys are Hydra. They move with the work of trained men, but they lack any of the . . . stuff that makes Hydra guys ruthless. They come up the stairs one by one, and Kasey and Bucky take them out one by one, like shooting fish in a barrel. Hydra would never make that mistake — they'd have guys on all sides, overwhelming them until Bucky and Kasey were fighting twenty men each.

She surveys all the officers on the stairs, and thinks, _They've underestimated us. _

Kasey scoops up the small battering ram with one hand, her fingers sliding through the handles, and brings it upwards as if it weighs five pounds before swinging it straight into the officer nearest to her. She tosses it to Bucky, who clasps it with two hands like a bat and swings it into someone's helmet-covered head.

A man crashes through the skylight above the drop in the middle of the staircase, and Bucky uses the battering ram on him too before using the wire as a bungee cord down another flight of stairs.

Kasey follows, charging a man who turns to Bucky with his gun up, finger on the trigger of a Heckler & Koch.

He never sees her coming.

She rams into him with her shoulder just as he fires. The gun clatters to the floor. She lands a punch to his throat, barely feeling the feeble fist that connects with her side. She slams his head against the floor, and he's out cold.

A hand descends on her shoulder, saying, "Stop — !" and Kasey grabs it and flips the person over her shoulder, landing them hard on their back.

It's Captain America, his shield equal distance away from them.

She makes eye contact with him.

Kasey waits a beat, then explodes towards the shield, an evil idea in her head. Captain America lunges forwards too, but a second too late — her hand closes around the edge, and Kasey simply leans over and drops it over the side. She watches red and white and blue flip over and over until it hits the bottom, twenty stories below, with a satisfying _clang_.

"You're going to hurt somebody with that," she says.

Captain America gives her an Uncle Sam-worthy look as he gets to his feet.

Kasey feels a childish grin pull at her mouth. _Fuck this guy_. She turns, and rushes down the stairs to help Bucky as five of the officers approach him at once. She puts her hand on the railing and kicks out with her feet, and the impact knocks three of them back like bowling pins.

The two of them continue to fight their way through the fray, with barely tolerated help from Captain America — who, in all fairness, takes out a fair amount of men on his own, but also attempts to stop Bucky or Kasey whenever he thinks they're about to go too far. She can't tell if his lack of shield bothers him or not.

"C'mon, man," Cap says, his hand hooked into the bulletproof vest of a man Bucky tried to send down the middle of the winding stairwell, just like his shield moments earlier.

In response, Bucky slams his elbow into an officer's face, knocking him out cold.

They work their way down several more flights until they all begin to blur together and Kasey couldn't say whether she had dispatched fifteen officers or fifty. She and Bucky try to fight ahead of Cap, and end up making it several floors ahead of him as they duck past officers, leaving them conscious for poor ol' Captain America to take care of. Kasey spares a glance back just in time to notice when he slams his fist into a man that nearly blows Bucky's head off.

The two of them make eye contact from different floors.

Kasey looks away first.

"Go," Bucky says, pressing a hand to her back, and Kasey swings her legs over the railing without any more prompting, pushing off and letting herself fall. Wind whips through her clothes and hair and tries to burn her eyes. When she looks down, she can still see the shield at the bottom of the stairwell, just a flash of a white star.

Kasey descends at least seven floors before her brain says, _That's enough!_ and she reaches out blindly, hooking a hand onto the nearest railing with both hands to stop her momentum. She grunts, her body jerks, and she feels her arm pop out of its socket with a sickening _pop_. A wave of pain radiates from her left shoulder and beyond, seeping until it connects with the constant pain in her stomach. The metal bends under her hands, nearly giving way, and she grits her teeth. _Fuck_.

Bucky hits the railing across from her with his metal hand — she'd never say, but it's the first time she's ever been envious of it — and the two pull themselves over the side. Kasey holds her arm close to her chest.

Sarge takes one look at her and sighs. "Kasey."

"I'm _sorry_," she mutters, and holds her arm out to him. Delicately as he can manage, Bucky rotates her arm until she hears another pop, and immediately, relief washes over her so powerfully that she actually sighs.

Bucky's worried gaze meets hers. "Good?"

She nods. "Good."

"This way," he says. Just behind him is a door, and Bucky wastes no time planting his foot into the handle and pushing it open. They follow it through to the hallway beyond, and it leads to the balcony outside. Directly below it — now significantly closer in height — sits the parking garage with their backpacks.

Bucky's face is tight as he begins stalking down the hallway. "Don't land on your arm," he instructs her over his shoulder. He feet pound into the concrete. "And watch your stomach!"

"Don't have a fucking cow," she grumbles. She waits impatiently for what must be only a few seconds, but feels like hours. Hearing the unmistakable sounds of fighting and light gunfire grow closer behind her is nothing short of unnerving. She watches Sarge until he disappears over the side, jacket flapping in the wind like a cape. Her feet begin to move before she even instructs them to.

Kasey bursts down the hallway like a bat out of hell.

_I am in control. I am in control. I am in control. _

Above her, she can hear Captain America getting closer, but he's too far behind to stop her now. She plants her foot into the concrete railing and _pushes_.

For a split second, she floats, and all the noise around her fades off into nothing.

Kasey's gaze wanders upwards.

_The sky looks so blue. _

She wonders, just for a millisecond, if she'll just continue on like this and fly forever — because if she could, she would. It's just so . . . peaceful up here.


	3. Chapter 3

Kasey hits the lip of the building and lets her knees buckle, trying to absorb the shock as she tilts her good shoulder forward into the momentum. She hits the ground with a grunt, sliding to her feet as fast as she can, and takes off towards her bag. Ahead of her, Bucky already has his and makes a break for the other side of the building, trusting that she's right behind him.

She presses a hand to her stomach, and feels something warm and sticky seep into her shirt.

Ripped stitches. Sarge isn't going to be happy.

_Goddamnit. That hurt_.

Up ahead, Bucky retrieves his bag, and glances back.

Kasey pushes her legs into a sprint, flashing Bucky a thumbs-up and a wild grin. She can't let him know just now. He'll have a full-blown freakout.

_Look out!_

Out of the corner of her eye, a shadow descends from above, and Kasey barely has time to yell, "Sarge!" before a man clad head-to-toe in skintight black armor surpasses her in a single flying leap. He plants his feet into Bucky's back, pushes, and the two go tumbling to the ground.

They get to their feet, staring at each other for a brief moment, as if sizing each other up. Then the other man drops into a fighting stance, his hands splayed out, and Kasey swears tiny little claws pop out from each fingertip to match the rest of his cat-themed suit. Bucky — who's always been an aggressive and offensive fighter, same as her — swings at him first, but the man knocks his hand away and lands two kicks in retaliation.

Kasey rushes them, feeling impossibly far away. Bucky barely lands a punch before a solid hit knocks him back against the concrete wall, landing out of the man's reach. Kasey comes up behind him and kicks the general area of his left kidney with all the force of her leg, but it looks as if he barely even feels it. Not only that, but he seems to only have eyes for Bucky. The man still manages to dodge her next swing and knocks Bucky to the ground, bringing his claws down on his face, and Bucky brings up a metal pole out of thin air to block it.

Kasey, seeing red, vaults over Bucky and tackles the masked man to the ground.

Once she's on top of him, she realizes just how weird the man's suit feels. From touch, it's tough and durable, but from the way he moves, it's clearly extremely flexible, unlike the bulletproof armor of the other soldiers, and it's certainly not Kevlar or any sort of mixture of it, which is what she's familiar with. If anything — and this sounds crazy to her own ears — it feels similar to Bucky's arm.

So _this_ must be a Hydra agent, then.

The masked man beneath her freezes unexpectedly. She can't see his face, but she suspects he looks surprised. In a thick African accent, he says, "You're a child."

_Oh, really, dipshit?_

The look Kasey must give him must say enough, because the man cants his head to the side and says, "No matter."

He slips from her grip with ease, and Kasey's vision does a one-eighty as he flips her over his head. She hits the ground harshly enough to feel each individual piece of concrete dig into her back. She lets out a groan.

_Get up, idiot. Get up now!_

A helicopter circles overhead, and an officer with a machine gun leans out the side and to take aim.

Bullets break up the concrete. Kasey dives out of the way. The masked man doesn't move; instead, he lets the bullets ping off his suit and stares up at the helicopter as if it inconveniences him.

Kasey eyes him suspiciously from only a few feet away, waiting for the moment he turns and pounces like the cat he looks like. Bucky rushes past her, tugging at her wrist, and she lets him lead her. They race to the side of the building. Kasey's footsteps jarr her stomach every time she takes a step, but she grits her teeth against the pain and decides to follow Sarge's lead. Bucky doesn't hesitate to leap over the side, scraping along the wall until he lands on a ledge twenty feet below. Kasey follows, and together, they make a second jump to the ground. The impact shakes her knees and makes it feel as if her lower legs are made of plywood that might snap at any moment.

But then she hears the sound of sparking metal and glances over her shoulder to see the masked man dropping down the side of the building, his claws leaving long indents in the concrete.

_Show off._

"Underpass?" Kasey asks Bucky, staying just a step behind him. She slings her pack over her shoulder as she goes and clips it around her middle. Her overactive brain takes note of everything around her, to the still-circling helicopter to the civilian they pass who makes a phone call home to his wife as he scrambles out of their way. "We gotta stay near people."

"Underpass," Bucky agrees, his breath coming out in controlled pants. His face scrunches up in determination, solid and firm as a mask, with his eyes giving away frustration and anxiety underneath. He doesn't pause in his dead sprint, not even for a moment, just reaches back with his right hand and scrambles for Kasey's arm, pulling her forwards and closer to his side. She sees why in just a moment as the helicopter circles one more, firing just as they reach the large hole in the middle of the ground, which is protected by a flimsy railing. It leads straight to the expressway below, where cars shoot by at sixty miles an hour. But at this point, anything beats getting a bullet to the brain.

Kasey leaps over the side.

Bucky lands first, Kasey milliseconds behind, but he still has to grab her under the arm and yank her out of the way of a car that threatens to run them over, laying on its horn and swerving.

An impact from one of these cars won't kill her, but it would do a lot more than tickle.

"He's right behind us," says Bucky. "We gotta go."

"Who is he?" Kasey asks. "Is he with them?" She doesn't mean Captain America.

"I don't want to find out."

Bucky pulls her into a run, following the direction of the cars, even though Kasey has no idea where that leads them. Seconds later, she hears cars lay on their horns and the squeal of tires. Kasey knows it means that the mysterious masked man has returned. She stumbles once, exhaustion and pain making her legs weary, and she uses the opportunity to glance back. She sees that it's not only him, but Captain America too, along with a small fleet of black SUVs with police sirens blaring.

_Oh God._

Bucky breaks away from her, planting his foot in the bumper of an upcoming Honda and pushing onto the trunk. He races over the top and off the hood, as if trying to put physical obstacles between him and the others. Kasey does the same, reveling in the small break she gets as the car continues to move and she doesn't have to push herself to a sprint until she leaps off the hood.

Then she climbs onto the back of a blue BMW, and the woman driving shrieks audibly and jerks her wheel in surprise, crashing through the barrels on the side of the road. The car bumps, skids — Kasey clutches the roof for dear life — and screeches to a halt. A plume of smoke erupts from under the hood.

The woman behind the wheel stumbles out of the car and collapses onto the road, clutching her ribs.

A hundred feet back, police cars barrel down the road. From the opposite direction, more barrel down towards the collapsed woman.

Kasey doesn't hesitate to leap off the car roof and tackle the woman, throwing them to the side of the road. A car scrapes by, inches from Kasey's head. The woman screams, the car blares its horn, and Kasey feels the skin around her barely healed wound rip back open even more.

_That was close. God, that was so close. _

Kasey gets to her feet slowly, feeling tense and achy in muscles she didn't even know she had. She reaches down to pull the woman to her feet, and —

And then Kasey pulls a small handgun from the holster on her hip.

She clicks off the safety.

She places the barrel between the woman's eyes.

"No," the woman says, eyes wide in terror, "no. What — ?"

Kasey pulls the trigger.

The woman collapses onto the roadway.

"Kasey, come on!" Bucky yells, ten feet away.

She blinks, and the woman appears before her, whole and alive, clutching Kasey's wrist.

"Thank you, thank you!" the woman cries. Her eyes fill with tears, but she seems grateful. Kasey has to physically stop herself from wrenching out of the woman's grasp like it burns. "You are a hero!"

Kasey can't meet her eyes.

She turns on her heel, leaving the woman behind, and vaults the barrier to chase after Bucky. It's better if she just leaves the woman there for the police. They'd be infinitely more helpful than Kasey could ever be.

Bucky looks behind him once, as if to check she's still there, and the wave of relief on his face doesn't escape her attention. She puts on a burst of speed until they run alongside each other, flying like two marathon sprinters.

"I hope you have a plan," she says, pressing a hand to her stomach when Bucky isn't looking. _Is this what ulcers feel like?_

Bucky huffs. "Yeah, I got something. But you're not going to like it."

Kasey glances at him out of the corner of her eye. His expression is purposefully tight and unreadable. "Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah. From here on out, avoid and evade."

Kasey has to stop herself from frowning. She pushes to keep something close to impassiveness on her face, and says, "Wait, wait, wait. Your grandmaster plan is for us to run like cowards away from the bad guys?"

"No, my plan is to live to fight another day," Bucky grumbles, glancing over his shoulder once more. There's a frustrated bite to his voice that has nothing to do with Kasey's questioning. She resists the urge to pat him on the shoulder.

Instead, she lets out a groan, trying to say something to lighten the mood. "God. This — this sucks major. I was being too optimistic before. Fuck this."

"Don't blow a fuse," he mutters, and Kasey would tease him for saying something so grandpa-y, but she doesn't have the energy. "They haven't caught up to us yet."

"_Yet_." Kasey blows a piece of hair out of her face. "Stellar."

They settle back into a rhythm of trying to outpace the men behind them in simple feats of speed, because they certainly have it, even if the others are in cars. Even Cap doesn't seem to be able to keep up — Kasey looks back to see that he has somehow required a military vehicle, and she can see him plainly in the driver's seat as he swerves around other cars. The masked man clings to the back, and the army of cars with blue sirens follow.

Cold creeps up her spine. The hopelessness of the situation they've gotten themselves into crawls through her body like a virus.

_There's a difference between having the whole world on our ass than just Hydra._

She glances back once more. Her lungs show the first signs of burning, and she thinks, _God, I know that now_. Captain America swerves haphazardly into the other armored cars around him, forcing them back, and one crashes against the tunnel wall. She looks forward again. Another opening to the sky appears above, and more police cars with flashing sirens block the way ahead.

"What the hell does he think he's doing?" Kasey demands.

Bucky glances back, and his expression softens. "Helping," he replies. "Go left, kid."

Kasey follows him as he leaps over the crash barrels and into the next lane, leaving the police cars to stomp on the brakes to avoid crashing into one another like a jousting match. The screeches of cars who don't stop in time absolutely wrecks her ears, and Kasey cringes. Above it all, she hears the crash barrels explode and tires squeal.

She senses they haven't shaken everyone from their tail.

Up ahead, a motorcyclist barrels down the center lane towards them.

Kasey grins. She knows what Sarge is going to do before he does it.

_And_, she thinks,_ if he doesn't, I will_.

Time seems to slow. Bucky sidesteps the bike seconds before it would've hit him, his hand reaching out and grabbing the left handlebar in his metal arm. And then he _pulls_. The driver goes flying off with a yell as the front tire swerves out from under him, and Bucky spins it around until it faces the opposite direction, throwing his leg over the seat before the bike even hits the ground. He idles, and waits for her to catch up.

"Go!" she yells to him, casting a glance at the motorcyclist, who slowly gets to his feet, cursing all the way. Besides from some road rash, he looks no worse for wear. He catches her looking and flips her off. Up ahead, Bucky revs the engine and crushes the accelerator. He's giving her seconds to catch up before he reaches a speed she can't keep up with.

Kasey closes in on the bike and grips the back of Bucky's jacket, letting his grip on the handlebars pull her feet off the ground and onto the backseat. He cuts back into the other lane of traffic and Kasey lets out a sigh of relief. Sirens wail in her ears, though she can't hear much out of her left one over the sound of her heart pounding. Briefly, she sees a flash of Falcon up above them, large wings extended.

_We just might make it_, she thinks. _If we lose them, we can get transportation anywhere . . ._

"You good?" Bucky asks, glancing backwards to look at her.

She nods. "Focus on not crashing, please."

"You gotta let me know if you need a break, okay?" says Bucky, raising his voice to shout over the rumble of the motor.

"What are you going to do, call a timeout?"

Before he can retort, Bucky's eyes widen marginally and he yells, "Get down!"

Kasey yanks her head down automatically, her hands tightening into Sarge's jacket. A shadow descends from above, and Kasey looks up to see the masked man leap from Captain America's car and onto their bike.

Bucky, faster than she can process, reaches out with his flesh hand and grabs the masked man around the throat, catching him in midair. Kasey swings her arm out behind her in a blind, sloppy arc. She connects, knocking his legs off the back of the bike where he'd try to balance.

Time slows as the masked man slips off the end of the bike and desperately tries to bring the bike down with him, his legs fumbling along the wall of the tunnel. Kasey feels him overcorrect and swing to the left side instead, his hands wrapped around Bucky's arm. The added weight tilts the bike with him, forcing Bucky to release his grip on the man's throat to switch hands in favor of propping them up.

Kasey lets out a little yelp, instinctively slipping her arms through Sarge's and clinging tight to his shoulders as the ground comes flying up to meet them. They lurch to a stop with concrete inches from her face. Kasey takes in a shuddering, gasping little breath.

Only Bucky's metal arm scraping against the expressway and his firm grip on the accelerator keep them from crashing. Kasey glances to her left, and sees flying concrete by that would tear her skin down to the bone inches from her nose. Her hair whips around her face in a frenzy. Sparks fly from Bucky's arm, and they land on Kasey's skin, bouncing off brighter than when they landed.

_Do something, do something, do something!_

Instinctively, Kasey jerks an elbow back and lands it right into the masked man's face as he continues to try and hold onto the bike. With a final kick of her back leg in a maneuver she can't even picture herself managing from her precarious position, he tumbles off the bike, and she hears the squeal of brakes as Captain America scrambles to avoid running him over.

She becomes aware of Bucky's pained grunts, louder than the screech of his metal arm against the concrete. "I — I can't — "

"_Push off!_" she screams into his ear, probably more shrill than she means.

He does without hesitation, and she just manages to keep them from overcorrecting.

Another small gap in the underground approaches, sunlight beaming through in a way that feels far too cheerful for their current situation.

Kasey gets an idea. Before she can properly think it through, she scrambles for the zipper on Bucky's bag and digs into his backpack — shoving aside several notebooks, and stacks of crumpled bills in the process — for one of the small explosives she and Bucky made together months ago, back when one of them was feeling overly paranoid and needed the reassurance.

Kasey's hand closes around the small dome of metal. Just as they pass beneath it, she tosses the device up_. Boom_. Perfect shot. Once it makes contact, Kasey knows they have three seconds before it's set to go off.

_It'll also be a great piece of evidence to prove that Bucky actually did bomb Vienna,_ which is something Kasey realizes far too late. _A Hydra bomb compared to a Hydra bomb_.

_God-fucking-dammit_.

The device goes off behind them, large enough to send huge slabs of concrete crashing down on the incoming crusade of police vehicles.

Bucky glances back at her, a knowing glint in his eye. Kasey can't tell if he smiles. It might be a figment of her imagination.

"Was that — ?"

He's cut off by the sharp sound of metal striking rubber. Kasey feels her butt leave the seat and that familiar plummet in her stomach as the back tire of the bike gives out. She can only watch as she flies over the handlebars even as Bucky and the bike crash immediately into the ground. She hits the concrete ten feet off to the side with a dull thud, her head smacking on the concrete.

"Fuck," she spits once the sky above stops spinning. She gets to her feet slowly, woozy like she's drunk — she's never been drunk, so Kasey can only imagine — just in time to see Captain America racing towards them, an overturned car tumbling end over end behind him. Behind that, debris and large pieces of concrete block the tunnel's exit.

The masked man attempts to jump onto Bucky again, but Cap gets there before it even occurs to Kasey to _fucking move, you idiot_, and he tackles the other man out of the way.

The two stand simultaneously, eyeing each other.

_Two alpha males_, Kasey thinks with a little bit of irony, and knows this is a fight she and Bucky don't need to be apart of. She slinks around Cap, stumbling only slightly, and helps Bucky to his feet, ready to pull him in another direction. There's a small staircase off to the right that leads to upper ground that they can make a break for.

More police cars are already approaching from the opposite direction, so if they want to go, they have to do it now.

Captain America puts his hand out, as if to stop them from running, and Kasey resists the urge to slap it away.

Bucky doesn't move.

The cars skid to a stop and soldiers pour out, large guns in hand. War Machine appears from the sky, landing on the ground between them with a heavy thud. One palm blaster points at the unknown masked man, and the other aims at Bucky. Kasey's already firing on all four cylinders and her senses jammed with so much input that the presence of another Avenger barely registers in her brain. Her brain tells her, _New threat! _and she practically bares her teeth in War Machine's direction.

Kasey feels as if a million bugs are crawling all over her skin and she has no way of wiping them off. Her thoughts start to come too rapidly for her to comprehend, but one floats above them all —_ Get the hell out of here, now! Before you're back where you swore you'd never be!_

She starts to tug Sarge towards the direction of the staircase with one hand gripping his sleeve.

Bucky stops her, shaking his head imperceptibly. His jaw has slackened, and he still stands defensively, half in front of Kasey as if he can protect her from the incoming onslaught. He doesn't glance her way, but his eyes are filled with raw determination and exhaustion. She can see the different sides collide like a war across his face.

_Here we go again_. That's what his face says.

Kasey freezes, staring at him, drinking it all in. Is he really going to give in, just like that? How can he give up so easily? She's never seen him do so before.

_But this isn't like before_,her brain reminds her. There isn't anywhere to run to, and this doesn't end once they shake these guys off their trail. The world will keep their doors locked and curtains drawn for fear that Hydra's most lethal assassins are out on the prowl.

Bucky was right. This is a thousand times worse than just Hydra.

Even so, Kasey doesn't want to stop and give up. Running from the police already looks suspicious. If they get taken in now, there's nothing to prove that Bucky didn't bomb the UN.

"Avoid and evade," she hisses to Sarge, low enough not to be heard, but not low enough to stop desperation from seeping into her voice. Bucky pretends not to hear her, but his jaw clenches tightly, glaring at War Machine as if he can bore holes into his metal-covered skull.

"Stand down," War Machine instructs, his metal helmet seeming to give her a pointed look as she continues to pull on Bucky's left sleeve, her body half-hidden behind his.

Kasey swipes a loose strand of hair from her face, trying to force herself to be calm. Her breathing pushes out of her chest in heavy and erratic breaths, having nothing to do with the amount of cardio she's unwillingly done today.

_I am in control_, she thinks. _I am in control. I am in control._

She's not. She's really not.

She's too late to be calm, and she's already blown past nervous — Kasey skips to straight-on Panic Mode. She spares a second glance at Bucky out of the corner of her eye, looking for a sign of a plan. He offers nothing. He looks defeated, wary, and at the same time, deadly calm. He doesn't move a muscle, even as Kasey, like a small child, tugs fearfully on his sleeve.

That makes her more nervous than anything else. The more panicked the Winter Soldiers are, the more somber and stoic they look. Kasey knows that even as her brain runs circles through her head and her muscles are doing acrobatics, her face probably looks as if she's zoned out, or that she's planning someone's murder. Except for her one hand, which seems to have a mind of its own, continues to tug on Sarge's sleeve.

Outside of her panicked haze — _run, run, run, run, run _— Kasey hears dozens of guns click off safety. Only half of them are aimed her way.

Next to Sarge, Captain America places his shield on his back.

Kasey feels defeated. The chase is over. Really over — and they lost. They barely lasted a _day_. Not even that. An hour. Maybe.

Her body continues to urge her to run, with or without Sarge, because that animalistic, primal side of her instincts refuses to be taken back to captivity. _I tried it, _she wants to say. _Me and a cage just don't mesh well, you dig?_

She reaches a hand up to her scalp as intrusive thoughts burrow their way into her head, insisting she run, insisting she not end up like all the dead at her hand, insisting that _fight, flight, or die trying _is the way the world works.

She tugs so hard on her hair she worries she might rip it out at the roots.

Bucky glances at her out of the corner of his eye, not even daring to turn his head. She sees one singular flicker of concern.

_Keep it together, Kasey_.

"Congratulations, Cap," War Machine says, his voice thick with sarcasm. "You're a criminal."

And just like that, the armored men rush forwards, circling them and shouting orders to each other until the noise pushes on Kasey from all sides, making her want to slap her hands over her ears. Each word cuts physically into her chest until it overwhelms her.

"Hands on your head! Hands up!" she hears. She doesn't move, waiting until one of them comes to her.

Her arms and her legs have gone numb, like a fuzzy sort of buzz, like TV static. She doesn't think she could've obeyed the men if she wanted to.

Kasey knows these signs her body gives her, knows what's coming.

_Come on, come on, not now . . ._

Normally, when something like this happens, Bucky's quick to fix it. Somehow, someway, but he does. And she does the same for him.

But Bucky's beside her, a weird look in his eye, and she knows he's trying not to get overwhelmed, too.

The men reach him first.

Kasey almost rushes forward as they force Bucky onto his stomach, a half-garbled protest clawing its way out of her throat. If they take Bucky down, then —

Someone grabs her arms behind her back and sticks their foot into the back of her knees before she can move.

Kasey has to mentally command herself not to scream, but the numbness in her limbs and the way her thoughts only seem to be yelling, _AHH! AHH! AHH! _certainly doesn't help.

They push her to the ground, and Kasey feels her hands clipped into cuffs. They don't try to be gentle, and it feels so familiar. Panic bubbles up in her throat — she wants to scream, sob, fight back, and no longer be here all at once — s_he can't go back they won't take her back _— this is the _government_, notHydra, but if those are two different things why is she on the run in the first place?

Her thoughts come too fast to process, making her dizzy and nauseous with fear. Her face and hands feel alight with fire, but her chest has gone ice cold.

"Bucky," she manages, wanting desperately to be _calm_, _be calm, Kasey, calm down_ — "S-Sarge." Then, a little louder, "Sarge!"

She can't see anything but the immediate ground around her. Grey concrete, worn from years of cars, cracked with little pebbles that Kasey can feel digging into her stomach. Then the concrete fades away, becoming an unrecognizable blur. The soldiers are still shouting orders, but at some point they've become incomprehensible.

Kasey can't go back to Hydra. She _refuses_. And if she's with the government, with the Avengers, then Hydra can find her. And then . . . then . . .

She pushes down the sob that threatens to rip from her throat. Her head is pushed down until her chin is touching the pavement, rubbing harshly, and she blinks back tears.

"Bucky," Kasey says again, voice cracking and sounding like a whiny child, but she doesn't care, she doesn't _care_, as long as she doesn't go back. She tilts her head to where she remembers him being, but someone shouts something at her in Romanian. A fist curls in her hair, pulls her head up, and slams it into the ground. Pain explodes across her vision. Tears well in her eyes. The motions pain puts her body through feel robotic.

The blow doesn't knock her out, but it hurts like a bitch. She grits her teeth and keeps back a groan. Her head is pulled back off the pavement, and if the concrete was blurry before, it's become unrecognizable now. Pain radiates from her nose into the rest of her face and throbs along with her heartbeat.

It's not broken. She can tell. Small miracles.

Somehow, the pain brings on a sense of clarity, a pinpoint that she can focus on and cut through the dizzying swirliness of her brain and pull her back to the present.

"Hey," someone says, like a warning. "Rhodey. Come on, man."

Kasey hears War Machine bark, "Be gentle, understand? That isn't in your job description."

The soldier above her grumbles something about where War Machine can shove his job description before yanking her to her feet.

Once she's up, Kasey scans the area for Bucky desperately. She finds him a hundred feet away, already being loaded into the back of an armored van. Cap is still standing there, a soldier holding the cuffs he's got on. He speaks lowly to War Machine.

_Desperate measures_, she thinks, and her eyes flit over to where Cap and War Machine stand. "Steve," she says. Her throat feels tight, though her voice doesn't show it. She sounds furious. "Captain. Captain."

He turns towards her, as much as he can. "Bucky," is all she manages. Instead of desperate, which is how she feels, she sounds as if she wants to rip his throat out. "Steve, _please_. I just — "

But what does she ask? To see him? To . . . what? Make sure they're together, wherever they're going? To request just a minute for her to say goodbye? Part of her hates that Bucky has become such a crutch for her to lean on, but other parts just want to see him, to draw comfort from their shared shitty situation like they have for the past year. Just the comfort of being in his presence would be more than Hydra would ever allow her in a thousand years. Maybe she's giving them a test, to prove that they're not with Hydra. Captain America seems her best option. The problem is, he's in handcuffs too, so he clearly doesn't have any jurisdiction about what happens to either of them.

"He'll be okay," Steve says. "I'll make sure."

_He's helping_.

Even if that's not what she meant, his words still send a course of relief through her. She doesn't want to believe Steve, doesn't want to trust him, but those words sound pleasing to her ears. She looks him dead in the eye while he stares back at her, and she's only able to meet his gaze for a few seconds, searching for a sign of a lie, before she has to look away. His gaze holds firm and unnerving, but with an unwavering show of promise that Kasey feels duped into trusting. She doesn't want to believe it, but . . . but she doesn't think he lied.

The soldier hauls her forwards, and Kasey keeps her head down, allowing herself to be pulled past Cap. Cautiously, she tests the cuffs they've placed on her wrists, and she knows they'll snap easily if she pulls on them. Maybe they don't realize she has the same serum as Captain America and Bucky, or maybe they didn't plan for it. A plan formulates in her mind.

_Think this through, Kasey, think this through . . ._

She catches a glimpse of Bucky's expression, and that's all it takes for a million angry, empathetic emotions to come rushing up and punch her in the face. Bucky looks dead and defeated.

It's an excellent pokerface, but Kasey's able to read between the lines because she has the _same_ one.

Bucky's fucking terrified. She can see it in his clenched jaw, his white face, his tight shoulders, the way his fingers dig into the arms of the chair he's strapped to, the way his eyes are locked on something in front of him but his mind is clearly elsewhere —

Rage rears its ugly head inside her chest, and a protective instinct hits her with the force of a semi-truck. Bucky is the only person who's given a shit about her in the past year. He's her only family left. And she can't — she can't see him like that. He can't — Bucky can't be defeated. He's been through so much. _They've_ been through so much.

So she acts without thinking. Maybe there's a fourth, less defined part of her that comes through in this moment, because every survival instinct she has screams at her to either fight, flee, or stand so still that she sinks into the miserable grey concrete.

But that fourth part? It screams, _Save Sarge NOW!_

And that's the part she listens to.

Kasey snaps the cuffs with one jerk of her arms.

She rams her elbow into the soldier's face behind her, feeling the crunch of his nose under her arm. He crumples to the ground, clutching his face.

People begin to react.

Kasey reacts faster.

There's a whole car and a slight swarm of people between her and Sarge. Seconds later, she stands in front of the cage, only a single pane of bulletproof glass separating them. She has a distant memory of an arm snapping and someone howling in pain.

It terrifies Kasey how little she cares.

Later, she'll realize how scary she must look now. And the part of her that's still Kasey in this moment is scared too.

In front of her, Bucky's eyes have blown wide and he says, "Kid. _Kasey_."

"I'm getting you out," she replies. He's sitting in a chair in a cell made of clear walls, already secured inside the armored truck by his wrists and ankles. She hears people behind her start to act, hears yelling and guns clicking. She has seconds, probably less, but she makes her way over to the key code lock on the side. She doesn't know how to override it. She tries to call upon a hidden skill like a video game character, but nothing appears.

Fine, then. She'll just go through.

"Kasey," says Bucky, like he can read her mind, "don't."

She meets his eyes. He's the only one she's able to look in the eye. His face softens, and he shakes his head.

"We can't go back," she replies, and her voice finally breaks. "_I_ can't go back, Sarge."

_Selfish. You're being selfish, Kasey_.

Bucky nods, still stoic, still terrified. "I know. I know. But — we'll . . . we have to trust Steve, Kasey. Trust him."

But — but — it's _Steve_. Where has he been the past two years?

"I trust _you_," she spits, and her voice breaks on the word.

Bucky doesn't say anything for a moment. There's no words of comfort to give, and they both know it. This is the least ideal situation she can think of.

"Don't make a fuss," says Bucky, lowering his voice to a whisper. "Please, kid. I just got you back. Don't make a fuss."

Rough hands grab her arms and Kasey resists instinctively, trying to pull away. Bucky says something to her, and it quickly turns to panicked yelling.

_You are mine, Eve. Nothing is going to change that_.

She feels something press into her lower back, and all of her muscles lock up, icy streaks of pain exploding from the spot and racing through her veins. Her teeth slam together and she barely avoids biting her tongue off. She can barely think, can't breathe, doesn't even get the chance to pull in enough air to scream.

_Not again_, she thinks. _Not again_.


End file.
